Title & Institution: Attending Physician and Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University

Email: tsho@mail.ncku.edu.tw

Topic in NCKU Research Week: Unmet clinical needs in dengue management: Diagnosis and Prognosis

Abstract: Dengue has become a globally important mosquito-borne infectious disease. The clinical manifestations of dengue virus infection are quite diverse, ranging from mild fever to hemorrhage and shock. Since there are no effective therapeutics, it relies mainly on early clinical diagnosis and supportive medical care. If the disease progresses to dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome, there is a high mortality rate. Therefore, how to predict the severity of dengue infection and treat severe dengue infection early has been the focus of global dengue research. Several major dengue outbreaks with various clinical characteristics and viral subtypes have been documented in the past two decades in Taiwan. Early screening for dengue virus infection is challenging due to the initial symptoms are often non-specific. As of today, guidelines for diagnosing and predicting severe dengue in infected subjects are the characteristics of clinical manifestations since no available methods or biomarkers that are reliable for diagnosis or prediction of severe dengue.  As such, there is an unmet clinical need for specific and inexpensive dengue prognostic test for clinical management and prediction of severe dengue. Confirmatory diagnosis through laboratory test might help case management, outbreak control and surveillance but complexities of the disease stages, co-circulation with other flaviviruses, and asymptomatic carriers contribute to the sensitivity issues in clinical application. In addition, local epidemiology, availability and resource limits should be considered in selecting the most optimal dengue diagnostic tools. In this presentation, I will overview current tools that are available for assisting clinical diagnosis for dengue virus infection and provide a conceptual vision on new diagnostic tools that are specific, reliable and inexpensive for diagnosis of dengue and severe dengue.

Personal Profile: Tzong-Shiann Ho is a clinical assistant professor at the College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University and also serves as an attending physician in pediatric infectious diseases and emergency medicine at NCKU Hospital. He has primary interests in epidemiology, biomarkers and diagnostics in dengue and other viral diseases.

Website link to personal research profile:  https://researchoutput.ncku.edu.tw/en/persons/tzong-shiann-ho